I Want to Praise You

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Sundance Winners 🏆 - On the short film side, congrats to The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing for taking the Grand Jury Prize. Short Film Jury Awards were presented to Trokas Duras (U.S. Fiction), Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites (International Fiction), We Were The Scenery (Nonfiction), and Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado (Animation). Also, The Eating of an Orange and Tiger took home Special Jury Mentions.

   
   We’d also like to shout out S/W alums for a strong showing on the feature film side with Hailey Gates, Charlie Shackleton, James Sweeney, Geeta Gandbhir, & Isabel Castro nabbing wins! Here’s the full list.

2. Piracy Strikes Sundance Virtual Screenings - Unfortunately, a pair of those alums with feature film wins have not had their premiere go smoothly as Castro’s Selena y Los Dinos documentary and Sweeney’s Twinless were made widely available on TikTok and file-sharing services after their Sundance Virtual Screenings. An outgrowth of the pandemic, virtual screenings have become a big money-maker for festivals and Sundance requires all competition films to participate.
   
   Now, a vocal part of film culture supports piracy, especially for rare and undistributed works. There are arguments made that the financial impact of piracy is overstated or that the publicity boost helps make up for it. But, ripping Netflix titles where future residuals are already bought out upfront versus unsold indie films at the peak of their hype cycle is a night and day difference to me and I feel for Castro, Sweeney, and their teams. Both films were pulled from the festival’s streaming site this weekend, and these kinds of hi-profile leaks might spell the end for public virtual screenings at festivals.

3. Vimeo’s Best of the Year - The curators at Vimeo Staff Picks have handed out their annual plaudits. Check out the recipients on the streaming platform’s microsite. If you’re in Europe and your access is blocked, we put together Shortverse collections of their Videos of the Year and Breakout Creators.

4. France’s César Award Nominees - France’s highest film honor has tabbed 10 short films as nominees across its animation, documentary, and narrative fiction categories. S/W France correspondent Céline recommends Changing Rooms (Ce qui appartient a Cesar) and it’s currently available to watch for free as part of the online My French Film Festival. Arte also has several of the nominees streaming for free if you’re in their coverage territory.

5. Oscars Scientific & Technical Awards - 14 achievements were selected for special honors from the Academy, Deadline has the rundown. I love this stuff and wish they included it more prominently in the main ceremony! Unfortunately, the fires in LA will push back this separate event to April, after the main Oscars in March.

6. Shortverse Best of Month - The latest edition of our monthly roundup of exciting shorts on the Shortverse platform. 12 films our curators picked are available to discover.

7. Kodak x Anora Finalist to Screen at SBFF - We posted the call-to-entry for this contest in the fall and it got crazy clicks! Now we’ll see the results as 10 winning films from the contest will screen on Feb 12 in a special program at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. We’ll keep you in the loop for when they come online.

8. Clarification on AI and Copyright - The U.S. Copyright Office has released important guidance on AI usage in creative works. Variety provides a rundown, but the TLDR is that works utilizing AI are eligible for copyright. But, the report also “reiterated that human authorship is essential to copyright, and that merely entering text prompts into an AI system is not enough to claim authorship of the resulting output.” This raises many questions that are yet to be resolved, as X user Luiza Jarovsky outlines in a thread. The full 41 page report is available for reading here.

9. When Did Animated Shorts Get So Long? - Ottawa Animation FF Artistic Director, Chris Robinson, asks the question in a new article on Cartoon Brew. Robinson makes a lot of great points, but this is also something not unique to animation and I hypothesize that it is, in part, an unconscious reaction to the rise of TikTok and short-form online video.

10.  What To Watch This Week - We’ve got a double recommendation for you, one in theaters the other on TV. In theaters, go check out Matthew Rankin’s TIFF favorite Universal Language. Inspired by Iranian cinema, the film was a leading contender for a Best International Film nomination before falling just short. Oscilloscope is slowly rolling it out in the US check out cities and dates at their website.
    
    On the TV side, we’re all-in on Adult Swim’s Common Side Effects, teaming up Joe Bennett (Scavengers Reign) with legendary producers Mike Judge and Greg Daniels. Co-created with Veep and Office writer Steve Hely, the series is pitched as a comedic thriller that takes on Big Pharma. The pair talk about the new series over at Cartoon Brew ahead of its premiere on Adult Swim and Max.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week